Pieces of the Sky [Reprise, 1974]Abetted by Brian Ahern, who would have been wise to add some Anne Murray schlock, Harris shows off a pristine earnestness that has nothing to do with what is most likable about country music and everything to do with what is most suspect in “folk.” Presumably, Gram Parsons was tough enough to discourage this tendency or play against it, but as a solo mannerism it doesn’t even ensure clear enunciation: I swear the chorus of the best song here sounds like it begins: “I will rub my asshole/In the bosom of Abraham.” C+

I think my favorite emmylou stuff is still her two albums as The Trio w/dolly and linda ronstadt (maybe just because I really like the other two?)

and this one is so good jeez

finally, here’s linda as a buxom lass singing a classic waylon song on the johnny cash show. I was just watching this on the dvd best of which includes a v. nice anecdote about this performance, courtesy johnny’s former hairstylist who relates

“at rehearsal june noticed that linda didn’t have any panties on so she came running back to the dressing room, ‘somebody get down the street and buy her some bloomers, she’s out there showing herself!’ when linda was told she would have to wear underwear she was very upset. she said, ‘I sing better bare-butted’ and june cc of course says “not in front of my Johnny!”

Dig the famous West Texas singer-songwriter, sculptor and uh I guess radio-playwright discussing the Magic of Radio:

“I know that there was another radio station later on when I was in high school, out of Oklahoma City. It was KOMA and they had a radio contest that kind of beamed out as far as their station beamed, and I can’t remember the nature of the contest but if you won you got two weeks completely paid round trip tickets, all expenses paid, anywhere you wanted to go in the world. So this was a huge contest. And I remember that when they announced the winner — the guy that won was somewhere in Oklahoma I think — he wanted to go to Salt Lake City!

I also remember — and this is god’s truth! — after Wolfman Jack there was a preacher that came on, I can’t remember his name, but he sold ah…in this kind of staggered version… starting with Bible place markers through all kinds of little gadgets and doodads and holy articles, starting out with like a quarter right up to a fifty dollar gold embossed red letter edition Bible. But he actually advertised selling autographed pictures of Jesus Christ that were direct from the Holy Land, and he told the story that one of his congregation was in the Holy Land and had in this holy spot come across this stack of 8 x 10 glossies with Jesus’s signature on them, and had brought them back and had asked them to be (sold). There was a note evidently with the photographs asking the photographs to be sold over the air to raise money for the spreading of the Lord’s word.”

“Famed rock-and-roll guitarist and longtime Ann Arbor resident Ronald “Ron” Asheton was found dead in his home on the city’s west side this morning, police said. Asheton, 60, was an original member of The Stooges, a garage-rock band headlined by Iggy Pop and formed in Ann Arbor in 1967.”

this album is medium appaling. I have grown to like it better than I did when we first received it but that does not say so much, since once i was medium-appalled (now bored?). ms. williams has mostly ditched the trappings of country/blues pastiche she once clung to on her critically-acclaimed 90′s recs (not necessarily a bad thing, folks!). moreso the loss of her famed perfectionist impulses, I think. she fails to imbue the cliches she employs with some poetic rearrangement, nudge wink irony or at least some happy earnest resigned embrace. what was once endearing or clever now looks lazy, I guess. there’s some alright stuff amidst plodding jammers– single “real love:” L does for cocksout rockers what she did for strummy weepers (the real love she speaks of is the rocker lifestyle – “standin up behind an electric guitar) as does “little rock star” though I could really have done without that flanger guitar chorus (really!).

and what the hell happened to her voice? flat, nasal spit delivery kills many of these attempts at love songs, torch songs, and lounge soul slow-dancers. her admittedly-affected sanging used to serve some utilitarian function, I think (emotive, ya know), but now it’s just something to get past, ignore.

“circles and x’s” is good, “tears of joy” is not (“I’ll be your woman…you be my king”). It makes me happy that she chooses to use the trad blues honey innuendo for the album title and song “honey bee” and I appreciate the extremes to which she stretches the thin metaphor (“I’m so glad you stung me/now I got your honey/all over my tummy”) but it’s a shame she chose to articulate it with an unlistenable screamy shouty pounder.

she stills sounds the most at home on the two or three country-rockers included–esp. “well well well” in which ms. williams actually sounds like she’s having fun. also I really like this song (recommended!), a callnresponse oldtimey gem featuring charlie louvin and jim lauderdale. “jailhouse tears” should work similarly, except that elvis costello as guest star duet pardner kind of sucks (sorry, cannot stand the man’s garbled brit-croon). “heaven blues” minimal callnresponse gospel stomper is an embarassing piece of one-dimensional genre affectation (sad to admit, coming as it is from a woman who once recorded albums of this kind of stuff).

GREG COPELAND – DIANA AND JAMES

“I’m not the only one who’s been masquerading/you can walk down fuck-up road, clear to Eden”

here’s another album we’ve had for quite awhile that I’m just getting around to reviewing. it’s a tough one to pin down– murky, meandering story-songs with whispered vocals don’t always grab at ya–but there’s definitely something I found immediately compelling about it all–

ok, so greg is jackson browne’s high school best friend. browne produced his debut way back some 30 years ago or so but nobody noticed and g fell into obscurity, gave up on music until I guess something changed. this album is released on some bitty label start-up run by browne but I think otherwise he has no involvement this time around, probably for the best.

the album is probably some sort of story-suite or something (over my head, of course)–at least there’s some thematic and narrative threads here (I’m pretty sure “I am the one”s narrator is the killer in “muddy water”s murder ballad murder, or at least the internet tells me so). many of the tunes are grounded in a half-hearted romantic optimism – lookin’ for love despite the high stakes, pervading sense of despair, what have you. “who you gonna love,” is lonely and desperate lyrically — “there’s nobody here in this little house gonna keep you warm/your guardian angel’s just sitting around, watching you toss and turn”– but the regal piano/organ/guitar hook girds the tune with an anthemic poppiness. the female duet vocals that accompany the cheerier love songs do wonders for their tunefulness and catchiness, given copeland’s old man gruff, half-spoken nod toward smokythroated soul.

probably the notsosecret hero of this record is producer greg leisz, famed A-list session stringman, who plays on all these tracks, plays lap steel, tenor guitar, mandola, mandocello, weissenborn, other things I haven’t of… leisz grounds the album is a rustic rootsiness similar to the clean folkpop sound of the npr sub-bluegrass set, but somehow weirder and warmer and hookier and doomier–slooow reverby pianos, organ, bass, strumming, plucking and bowing (minimal percussion).

the two gregs play with or comment on country song conventions without going the ballsy alt route or the over-reverent one (and without making the album sound anything like a country album). in “typical,” copeland sing-speaks:

coupled with 2 minutes of intro/outro pedal steel and I know it sounds gimmicky and over-clever, but the playing totally sells it (I would listen to leisz kill on steel without the conceit of any song structure, of course).“a woman & a man” starts off as some rangy groovin folk-rocker with tremelo guitar chords and copeland’s on some deep thoughts spoken shit – “there it is again/LA’s buzzin like a busted amp/and I think of you..” but then the chorus kicks in, the drummer makes a quick-switch to a C&W two-step, enter fiddles and duet vox (and of course, now we know, this is a love song) and he sings: “pick up your gibson and play/go fall in love and don’t stop.”anyway, good album. I like it.